|
|
|
#1146 | Monday, April 1st, 2002
|
|
Hello,
I have been searching for a forum to address the World Trade Center rescue activities during 9/11-9/18. The thing that stands out most about the this tragedy is the Gullian administration's, Bush administration's and the media's deliberate failure to acknowledge the efforts of Long Island's Fire Departments and the thousands of its members that participated in the rescue efforts. To this day the volunteer Fire Departments of Long Island have not received any recognition for the countless hours that they put into aiding in the search for survivors and the deceased. It is time that we are contacted and our experiences be allowed to reach the American public, a large segment of which doesn't even know that we exist. The annals of American History must truly reflect what went on that disasterous day and I would like to aid in bring this information forward. Just because we don't get paid to be in the Fire Service doesn't mean we should be ignored and excluded from the historical record. To allow this to happen would be an insult to the Fire Service and Volunteer Fire Fighters around the world. Justice must prevail for us all. Many of us did not get paid by our employers for participating in Ground Zero operations. I am certain the same thing happened during operations at the Pentagon.
What are your thoughts?
|
Nassau | 37 | New York
|
#1147 | Tuesday, April 2nd, 2002
|
|
I remember getting out of the shower, wrapping myself in a towel and sitting on the couch. I lit a cigarrete and flipped on the tv. This was about 8:40 am so news of the attacks wasn't on all the channels as it would be later in the day. I watched a couple minutes of the local news and decided nothing interesting was happening in Michigan so I flipped to CNN. This may have been just before the second impact or just after. I don't remember which. I sat there and stared and stared. I didn't cry but I just remember thinking that it wasn't real. I'll tell you that even after all was said and done, it never became real to me until days later. I called my mom and she was crying, screaming into the phone at me about how this could have never happened. I said little but I understood her sentiments exactly. I skipped my college classes that day and just drove around town smoking cigarrettes stopping at stores and just watching people go about their business as usual. Of course, people were talking about the morning's events but I felt like nothing was ever going to be the same again. I guess that in some ways, maybe more ways than we now know America will never feel as safe as it did on September 10th.
Sorry, rationalizing a little bit there. Please bear with me. Anyway, that driving around was one of the few things that made me feel better that day. Smoking a bunch of cigarettes helped too but I paid for that the next day by coughing my ass off.
One thing before I go: I hope to never again see that level of hopeless destruction, loss of life, and horror again as long as i live.
|
John | 23 | Michigan
|
#1148 | Tuesday, April 2nd, 2002
|
|
I live in Arlington, Virginia, less than one mile from the Pentagon. On September 11th, I was sitting at my desk in my home office/studio working on a new piece of artwork when I heard the sound of a very loud aircraft. Since we are not far from Reagan National Airport, at fist I just chalked it up to that and voiced my annoyance aloud for my work being disrupted. But as the sound of the plane grew loyder and louder, I thought to myself- that plane is in trouble. I jumped up from my chair as the screeching and whining of the engine got even louder and I looked out the window to the West just in time to see the belly of that aircraft and the tail section fly directly over my house at treetop height. It was utterly sickening to see, knowing that this plane was going to crash. The sound was so incredibly piercing and shrill- the engines were straining to keep the plane aloft. It is a sound I will never stop hearing- and I now imagine the screams of the innocent passengers were commingled with the sounds of the engines and I am haunted. I was unaware at this time that the World Trade center had been attacked so I thought this was "just" a troubled plane en route to the airport. I started to run toward my front door but the plane was going so fast at this point that it only took 4 or 5 seconds before I heard a tremendously loud crash and books on my shelves started tumbling to the floor.
I ran out into the street in terror and my neighbor across the street ran out of his house and we both knew that the plane had crashed. We saw a tall column of black smoke arising to the East- quite close, so we knew the plane had crashed somewhere very nearby. We ran into my house and turned on CNN, only to find out that the country was under attack by terrorists. We were horrified and feared for our lives. Soon after, we heard and saw entire squadrons of fighter jets flying over so low that the windows rattled and pictures fell from the walls. Sirens wailed and the streets became clogged with unmoving traffic. We were trapped in our neighborhood and we couldn't get away. We heard that another plane was on its way and was heading for the capitol and that it would be shot down if necessary. We feared that we would not be able to run away far enough or fast enough to save our lives if the plane came down in our small quiet neighborhood, a peaceful suburb of our nations' capitol. This day brought our entire neighborhood closer together in a time of crisis since we had to rely on each other as family.
|
Linda | 34 | Virginia
|
#1149 | Tuesday, April 2nd, 2002
|
|
I remember being at school, when I heard talk of an explosion in the world trade center. It was at lunch when I heard more detail, a plane had crashed into it. The period after, I was in English class watching the events unfold when I saw the second plane hit live. And it wasn't until later at home that I heard about the other two planes. What causes one man to have so much hate? All we can do is pray for such things.
|
Stephen | 15 | Ohio
|
#1150 | Tuesday, April 2nd, 2002
|
|
I was in homeroom, when the Principal came on saying that we should bear in mind the souls lost at the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. They told all students who had parents working there to report to the library. Meanwhile, I asked my homeroom teacher, what happened, and he told me that two planes crashed into the World Trade Center. The image I had in my head was one of two plane colliding in mid-air and falling into the buildings, but that didn't seem plausible. I then started to think about the people who crashed the planes. I thought it was some domestic anarchist society at first. We couldn't get any tv stations, because we're served by the NYC stations, which were off the air, and our school doesn't have cable. All we could get was the morning's edition of Channel One. Hilariously irrelevant, so sept. 10. I sat through the day, watching scrambled WCBS-TV, the only working station, with no audio. I had my CD player, and on the bus home, I was listening to WQXR, one of the few stations that weren't playing CNN feeds. They were playing a piece by Chopin, and when it was finished, the DJ announced the time and the week's forecast. It was unseasonably warm that week in New York, and she said, "Tommorrow is going to be a beautiful day." When I got home, I took my TV and watched the BBC on my small black and white TV in my bedroom. I'm a 17-year old young man, and still, listening to the description of Osama Bin Laden's terrorist cell that night, I couldn't sleep. I closed my door, my window. Still, I couldn't close my eyes without feeling insecure. It's hard for me still to realize that if I weren't alive that these attacks would still have happened. I know that sounds unusually arrogant, but it's true for some reason. Stay strong and pay close attention.
|
Armand | 17 | New York
|
<< |
< |
showing 1146-1150 of 2527
| >
| >>
|
|
|
|
|
